Hypergamy
‘Hypergamy’ has in certain contexts been used as a word for the desire of women for a co-operator of higher status than themselves. Status is any appearance of hypergame, such as auctoritas. The status is perceived through their personal desire, and is dependent on all factors that make up a human being, such as the desire for social validation or popularity but also on maturity or parental influence: teenagers chasing after rockstars ("The Beatles") whom they may have sent love letters is an instance of hypergamy in this context. Hypergamy is in some contexts regarded as a name for a theory influenced by Evolutionary Psychology; a theory on the instinctual desire of humans of the female sex to try to have relations with the most "genetically" impressive male for her personal view; evolutionarily this would have been to maximise the chance of the healthiest or evolutionarily aggressive offspring. For this purpose, she will e.g. discard a current mate, when the opportunity arises to latch onto a subsequent mate of higher status, due to the hindbrain impetus to find a male (according to her unconscious or conscious ideal) with the most powerful traits regardless of investments and commitments made to a current or previous mates. Etymonline: Hypergamy, "marriage of a woman into a lower class, caste, or tribe," 1940, an anthropologist's word first used in an Indian context, from hypo- "under, beneath" + -gamy "marriage." Related: Hypogamous. Since hypergamy is in a strict sense word that only refers to a type of marriage arrangement, we may also speak of hypergame instead to refer to the evolutionary-value maximising strategy described in the above paragraphs. ‘Game’ descends from an Old English word meaning ‘amusement’, and a girl opting to go for a ‘joy ride’ is definitely seeking game. Untamed hypergame is documented to have legal consequences, such as divorces and statutory rape charges. Justification attempts of harmcausing hypergame have been referred to as the spinning of the Hamster. Being bad at gaming hypergame has been referred to as being "Blue Pilled". See: Red Pill Sexual Theory; The Red Queen evolutionary arms race. See more generally: Female Imperative See: Feminist Theories On Hypergamy: Feminist analysis of hypergamy says the practice needs to be understood in the context of a system: men choose attractive and young partners due to fertility and reproductive success, and women choose partners with material resources simply because they make life more comfortable. Feminist historians say lower-status families participate in hypergamy because it's felt that the best possible use of a daughter is for her to increase the status of her natal family by marrying up.1819 Hypergamy allows higher-status men maximum choice in mate selection, and, as historically practiced in India, results in the man's family gaining wealth through the transfer of dowry from the bride's family.20 Overall, hypergamy has the potential to advantage lower-status women economically and socially the most, since they marry into a higher status and the dowry becomes part of their marital wealth. This occurs at the cost of less-desirable, higher-status women (by removing high-status men from their mating pool, from which social constraints and economic disincentives already exclude lower-status men). Lower-status men are disadvantaged the most (by removing lower-status women from their mating pool, from which social constraints and economic incentive structures already exclude higher-status women). The overall effect is that all women have a chance to marry into a high(er)-status, whereas lower-status men do not.21